In Competition No. 2392 you were invited to supply a poem in praise of something generally considered ugly.
Chesterton beatified the donkey ‘with monstrous head and sickening cry, And ears like errant wings’ who carried Christ to Jerusalem, and Stephen Spender rhapsodised (as one of you did) about pylons, ‘bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret’. I could not accept a 1930s Murphy radiogram as an icon of ugliness (nostalgists might adore one), nor wasps, which are pesky rather than unbeautiful, but the back end of a bus (especially when you have just missed it) I allowed. The winners are printed below, Paul Griffin taking £30 and the rest £25 each.
Most ladies, like Muffet, are convinced they will snuff it
If a spider comes in their vicinity,
From which they determine a spider is vermin
And damn it from here to infinity.
Myself,
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